Of all the things Soundgarden is known for -- howling vocals, riffs like anvils, spoons, astrophysics -- humor doesn't rate. They're heavy, gloomy, tormented and all the best things we turned to grunge for in the 1990s.

But they're not funny.

Enter Dave Grohl, who knows of heavy, gloomy and tormented from his time in Nirvana. No one thought that band particularly humorous either, but then he launched the Foo Fighters and hilarity (and bombast) ensued. Grohl's a guy who seems to have figured a lot of things out.

In November, Soundgarden released "King Animal," its first album of new material since 1996's "Down on the Upside." Wednesday, the band will play a sold-out show at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, its first Portland performance in more than a decade. This week, the group released a video directed by Grohl for one of the album's best tracks, "By Crooked Steps."

The video isfunny, casting Soundgarden as a black-leather-clad Segway gang rolling hard into the club, where they flippantly close the DJ's laptop, step up and rock out. They're the old guys on the scene. They're aware of that.

Soundgarden helped define the mid-'90s sound with hits including "Spoonman" and "Black Hole Sun." The band broke up in 1997, re-emerging now to a scene defined by the kids and their laptops. In fact, the domain Soundgarden.com doesn't belong to Soundgarden. It's an online radio site featuring dubstep, hip-hop, house and all other manner of electronic music. Soundgarden the band is at SoundgardenWorld.com.

But they're not going to cede their turf --not in the video, and not on "King Animal." After singer Chris Cornell's stylistically meandering solo career, the new record is recognizable to anyone who remembers the band's biggest days.

"After six or seven albums and 13 years or so working outside Soundgarden, I feel satisfied I got to explore all the different facets of music that I love," Cornell recently told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. "The one thing I knew I wasn't going to do was to try to make a record that sounds like Soundgarden. I always had too much respect for the band and the fans to ever do that."